


Do Not Go Gently Into The Dark

by grimmauxillatrix



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sickfic, Terminal Illnesses, Work In Progress, possibly inaccurate depictions of cancer, terminal illness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-22 17:41:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grimmauxillatrix/pseuds/grimmauxillatrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And I guess, if I have to regret one thing about dying now, it’s that I’ll never find him, and that I can’t die with that same calm I had in my dream.”</p><p>Robert Fischer is dying. Eames wants to give the man haunting his dreams one last chance at being loved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Seeking a Friend For the End of the World

"You're dying."  
  
The words seemed to float across an infinite distance, traversing space and time for tens of thousands of years before they settled in his chest with their heavy certainty.  
  
Robert Fischer blinks at the doctor, who looks back at him, peering over his clipboard as though he's expecting Robert to throw a temper tantrum.  
  
He laughs hoarsely instead.  
  
"Dying? Really? But I feel fine."  
  
That was a lie, of course. He wouldn't have gone to the doctor if he had been fine, hadn't been experiencing sore joints, sore bones, an aching exhaustion that had sat in his ribs, awaiting their cousin, those fateful words-  
  
"I'm sorry Mr. Fischer, but the tests say…" The doctor pauses again, as though the gap between the verdict and the judgement would make the words come easier.  
  
"The tests say that you're experiencing the final stages of late-onset osteosarcoma that has metastasized-"  
  
Robert waves his hand impatiently, ignoring the twinge in his elbow.  
  
"I'm getting a second opinion, Doctor."  
  
Now the Doctor sighs at him, smiling patiently as though he's heard it all before. In all probability he has, his primary patient-base being rich older men who hold the world in their palms- or so they think.  
  
"I'd be happy to recommend several, Mr. Fischer."

\-----------  
  
Three doctors later, Robert stares at the small stack of paper he's accumulated in his hands. They all concurred, though the causes seemed to differ slightly. Malignant cancer, widespread. Prognosis; 6 months to a year.  
  
The papers have phone numbers and addresses in them; support groups, counseling, drugs to maintain his quality of life through his inevitable decline, nurses, funeral homes. He could start with any one, plan his funeral (in freezing cold snow, in a citadel, the thought flashes through his mind and vanishes before he can quite comprehend it), write his will.  
  
Instead he turns to his computer, the finest money can buy.  His fingers tremble over the keyboard, before he carefully pecks out a message that will be sent out to he knows not where. He hits enter, sits back in his chair with a hiss of breath. The words float delicately on the screen, reflecting off the window behind him.  
  
 _Seeking a friend for the end of the world._

\-------------

Three years later, Eames still can't quite stop worrying about the job.  
  
Oh it went splendidly, as far as everyone was concerned. Fischer didn't remember a thing, Saito maintained his fragile equilibrium in the energy market, Cobb was with his children and everything was perfectly fine and dandy.  
  
He doesn't know the reason he worries (in his dreams the man dies, lips parted in a last gasp, a parting word), he was the one who cared the least. After all, was that not his job? To fake affection for the mark, to pretend to be someone else (the blue eyes look shocked, as though the mind behind them still can't believe that someone could take away his fragile immortality, the sanctity of his being violated so crudely by bullets) so that the mark would open up and confess.  
  
If he lets himself admit it, in the darkest of night when nobody, not even he is alert and watching, he worries about the man he brought back to life in the snow-bound citadel of his own mind. What forced Fischer's mind to construct that fortress of ice and rock? It wasn't what he was hiding that bothered Eames, it was why he felt he needed to hide. Why.  
  
A Forger's job was to understand people and to know how they worked, and to be able to mimic them, but if Eames is honest with himself, he knows that the reason he can mimic so well is because, in the end, he doesn't know people at all.  
  
As it has become his most recent hobby in his never-ending quest to perfect his knowledge of people, he flips open Craigslist and goes through the personals. Tawdry desires spill open before him, (he'd wondered what those lips felt like, he'd been tempted to run his fingers through the hair but there hadn't been enough time) unspooling from their hidden box of iniquity. He smirks at a few and flicks his fingers, sending them flying, the endless scroll doing nothing but to bore him. And then he stops, eyes caught by one sentence. His brow furrows, and he clicks 'view more.'  
  
  
 _Seeking a friend for the end of the world._    
  
\------------  
  
Robert's been working on his resignation speech, his plans to hand the company over to some junior executive who wouldn't turn what remained of Fischer-Morrow into a smoking crater, his will, when the email pops up, with that annoyingly cheery tone that he could never figure out how to get rid of. Figuring it's some variety of company business, or Uncle Peter, he lets an exasperated sigh slip through his teeth before opening it.  
  
The sigh catches on his lips and he pauses, having not expected this.  
  
 _As it happens I have nothing better to do before armageddon. Where are you?_  
  
He re-reads the message several times, half of him ready to delete it as nothing more than some creep fishing for a cheap date. But the other half of him, the half that responds to the email and hits 'send' says  
  
 _I'm in New York right now. I hope that's not too much of  problem for you._  
  
Two hours later, an hour and a half after he'd given up on the email and gone back to writing his resignation letter, the cheery herald brings him a new message.  
  
 _Not at all. Are you free any time soon?_  
  
He laughs a little, nearly choking on the inevitability and fear and regret sitting at the back of his throat.  
  
 _I'm going to be free in about a week._  
  
 _For the rest of my life._ He adds, a moment later.  
  
 _Very well then. I'll be in New York in a week._  
  
That's it. No date, no time.  
  
No excuse for Robert Fischer, who still had his dog-eared and yellow copy of the Collected Sherlock Holmes sitting in his bedside drawer, to avoid giving into his curiosity and taking the next step.  
  
 _Send me a message when you get here._  
  
He's almost done with his letter when the reply comes.  
  
 _Of course, darling._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The dashes (-------) mean a change of point of view. Hopefully that's clear.


	2. Coffee Beans and Chemotherapy

It's almost a relief to be sitting outside the ubiquitous Starbucks, waiting for his mysterious rendezvous from the internet. The entire board had collectively hit the whirling bladed device when he announced that he was stepping down and handing control of the company to someone else, and oh, he was dying. Nepotism clearly ran strongly in Fischer-Morrow, because the major issue wasn't that he was dying, but rather that he was discarding his inheritance and handing it to someone who had no idea what the weight behind it was.   
  
He'd excused himself by saying he had a chemotherapy appointment to go to, and that his replacement would be happy to answer any questions.   
  
His replacement, standing next to Uncle Peter, hadn’t looked too pleased. Neither had Uncle Peter.  
  
He didn't have a chemotherapy appointment to go to.  
  
Robert looks down at his coffee, and down at the neat little box he's taken to toting his medication around in. He'd had no idea that so many different kinds of pills even existed, prior to his diagnosis. Little red ones, blue ones, many plain white ones sat in the plastic enclosure, looking up at him as another reminder that yes, he wasn't going to live very much longer. He picks up the first one, the one he knows is a potent painkiller, and tries to gauge if it's time to take it yet. No, no, the persistent ache in his bones isn't strong enough yet. He puts it back down, closes the box, and squints at the crowd along the sidewalk, looking for a person wearing a bright red handkerchief somewhere obvious on their person.  
  
\--------------  
  
Eames fiddles with the bright red silk handkerchief in his breast pocket, muttering angrily at himself, the mysterious internet person he was meeting, and his sense of adventure. Who even made rendezvouses like this anymore, with mysterious signs and clandestine meetings in crowded public places?  
  
Someone worried about being met by a serial killer on the internet, he mutters at himself a moment later. He'd do the same thing, only with the added caveat of having a friend with a gun close at hand. Better safe than sorry, even on what is supposed to be a friendly meeting of two lonely souls.  
  
Giving up, he stuffs the handkerchief into his pocket, pulling out enough of the wad to keep it visible. Then he rounds the corner, looking around for a person with a blue box. He snorts a little. A blue box. That was one of the stupidest things he'd heard, and he includes everything Ariadne had ever said in that assessment. He scans each table at the Starbucks, maintaining a distance in case the person is obviously terrifying, or looks unstable, or-  
  
His heart stops for a moment, and then begins at double-time, trying to make up for its momentary lapse in its duties. The only person sitting at any of the tables of the Starbucks with anything remotely resembling a blue box is currently fiddling with it, scanning passerby with the most piercing blue eyes he'd ever had the fortune to see up close, brow furrowed a little bit in the concentration of crowd-watching. Eames turns away, shielding the stupid red handkerchief with his hand, and groans.   
  
Robert fucking Fischer is his rendezvous.  
  
Arthur is going to be so mad when he hears that Eames has broken the rules of non-contact between an extractor and a mark. Again.   
  
(They don't talk about that incident. Not anymore.)  
  
Composing himself, curiosity now unbounded by logical restraints, Eames strolls up to the table and clears his throat over Robert's shoulder.   
  
"Is this seat taken?"  
  
Robert looks up, irritation crossing his face.   
  
"Look, there are several other tables you could sit at-oh."  
  
Eames can't quite look away from the way Robert's lips purse themselves together after that small 'oh'. He chuckles and sits down, offering Robert his best rueful grin.  
  
"I'll be honest, I was expecting some young woman who was weary with the world and wanted to be taken away by someone tall dark and handsome." He quips.  
  
Robert snaps the top of the box closed and almost blushes. What is up with that?  
  
"Well I was expecting some neck bearded individual with foul breath and horrible taste in clothes, so at least I can say I'm pleased with this encounter." The words come out a lot quieter than Eames would have expected from the CEO of one of the world's largest companies.   
  
"Oh no, I'm not displeased at all. I'm just surprised."   
  
He holds his hand out.   
  
"Eames Harrison."  
  
Delicate (the word could be used to describe the entire man) fingers brush against his before his hand is take in a surprisingly firm grip and shown who's the dominant one for a moment.   
  
"Robert Fischer."  
  
"Fischer? Like the company?"   
  
Robert leans away from him, looking incredibly displeased and a wee bit petulant.   
  
"Yes, although I'd rather not have this turn into a talk about my business, or how my company is horrible, or anything else you'd like to mention."   
  
His nostrils flare as he takes a deep breath, clearly ready to continue. He's interrupted by a rather nasty looking cough that bends him over and pulls itself out of his throat with sandpapery tendrils. Eames gets up and stands next to him, but pulls his hand away as Robert sits back up, now flushed and disheveled.   
  
"I was merely going to make a passing remark about you being a CEO of a rather influential corporation, Mr. Fischer, but we can skip that part if you'd like." Eames sits back down in his chair, feeling far more worried than he'd like. Now that he's had a chance to observe the former mark, he realizes that Robert looks far more gaunt than he had on the airplane. Paler and thinner, as though his job had literally sucked the life out of him. Eames worries.   
  
"I'd appreciate that, Mr. Harrison," Robert says dryly.  
  
"Please, call me Eames."  
  
"Then I suppose you should call me Robert." He pauses for a moment, looking a bit distrustful, and a bit coy. "I'm no longer the CEO at any rate."   
  
Eames blinks a little.   
  
"You aren't?"  
  
"Oh no. My doctors recommended that I stop working. You see, Mr. Eames, I happen to be dying, so I really have nothing to do with the company anymore."  
  
Despite his best efforts, his heart drops into his gut and proceeds to take a bath in his stomach acid.  
  
"I'm sorry, what?"  
  
"I have cancer, Mr. Eames. Had it for a while, apparently, and then it chose to spread and now it's too late to stop it, and now there's nothing to do except wait to die." The words spill from his lips as though he's eager to get rid of them, as though he's confessing a dirty secret, as though he has no one else to tell. And Eames knows that he doesn't (although he'd vaguely hoped that there was someone there to take care of the lost soul who'd sat in the airplane seat as though he hadn't the faintest idea of what he was doing or where he was, quite like a lost child), and his heart, unused and dusty after not caring for so long, _aches_ for Robert Fischer.   
  
"I'm… I'm sorry to hear that." He murmurs.   
  
Robert looks miffed, but says nothing. He stirs his coffee idly while Eames tries to keep the conversation going.   
  
"So when you said the end of the world you meant-"  
"My death, yes. I'd like to not be defined by that though, if you wouldn't mind. I've had enough of people trying to coddle me, suggesting I'm not in my right mind…" He sniffs, frown plowing furrows into his forehead.  
  
"Besides, why would you care? We've barely met."  
  
Eames wants to say (because his dreams have been filled with blue eyes and wavy hair and cheekbones and thin fingers that he can barely not reach for the past three years) because he seems so lost and alone. Instead he says "Because you're a fellow human being, and if we don't look out for each other, who will?"   
  
He's a Forger, he fakes connections, but this one is so real he can see it, gossamer strands as strong as iron in the air between then, and that's not how he does things, and then Robert smiles-  
  
"That's the first altruistic thought I've heard in my entire life."   
  
And though the words are strange, the meaning behind them is so painfully clear and pleading that Eames can't help but move his hand out, just a little.   
  
"Well I'm glad it's from a friend."


	3. The Loneliest Penthouse

They're standing next to a taxi that will whisk Eames back to his hotel, with promises to meet again and perhaps even do something besides chat over coffee when Robert spasms and falls over. Later he tells himself that he just happens to be conveniently in the way, but Eames jumps in front of him and arrests his fall, wrapping him in a bear hug to keep him from falling anyway. His first thought is to bundle Robert into the taxi and get him to a hospital, and he's about to do so when Robert makes a noise, face pressed rather roughly into Eames's shoulder.

"Do you need a doctor?"

"No… no… I just need to lie down…" Eames can barely hear him over the street traffic.

So he gets to bundle Robert into a vehicle anyway, albeit not in the fashion he would have preferred. Robert gasps out an address to the unconcerned cab driver, and then sits huddled in the corner of the seat, staring blankly out at the passing city. He shrinks away when Eames tries to check his pulse, and he can barely get up and out of the taxi when they arrive outside one of the shiniest condominiums Eames has ever seen (and he has seen his fair share of the rich and famous's homes). Whether he can't or won't refuse a helping arm this time Eames doesn't know, but Robert ends up clinging to him all the way up to the penthouse.

Once the door opens Robert insists on staggering to the couch by himself, collapsing in an ungainly heap atop the soft leather. Following cautiously, Eames takes a seat on the ottoman, regarding Robert with a frown. Robert frowns back.

"You've helped enough. You can leave."

"I'd feel like a complete prat if I left a sick man all alone in his apartment without anyone to keep an eye on him."

"I'm going to die anyway, what's the difference?" To Eames this sounds less resigned, and much more like a fit of pique. He responds with his best grin, the one that made Arthur very very upset seventy percent of the time he used it.

"Because it's better to have a companion in your worst hours, I think, than to suffer alone."

Something flashes across Robert's face, and he uncurls slightly with a sigh.

"I hate you." He declares, without any malice behind his words.

"I love you too darling," Eames replies absently, looking about for a blanket or something that could be used to comfort and cover. After a moment he realizes what he's said and flinches, turning back to Robert to see how he'd have to cope with whatever reaction the man might have.

Robert had chosen that precise moment to fall asleep.

\-----------------

He wakes up in his bed, with a man sitting in a chair next to him flipping through his Collected Sherlock Holmes. Unlike in the movies, he doesn't panic, nor does he not recognize Mr. Eames, his surprise acquaintance from his ill-thought-out Craigslist posting. Instead he asks the most sensible question he can come up with.

"Why am I in bed, Mr. Eames?"

"It looked a lot more comfortable than the couch," he responds, turning a page. The nonchalance of this response is somehow reassuring. Apart from his shoes, he's wearing everything he'd gone out in, and he's now convinced that Mr. Eames is not in fact out for his money or his life.

"Why are you still here?"

"That is the obvious next question, isn't it." His accent comes on a bit more that time, although Robert thinks he might just be associating the Sherlock Holmes book with the man.

"I am here, because I was not going to leave a sick man alone in his apartment, not even if he tells me himself that he's fine. Because he probably isn't." He snaps the book shut, at least as well as he can with how worn the novel is. Robert finds himself amused at the vague irritation on Eames' face at the lack of a proper snap.

"Besides," He says a little more quietly. "I really have nowhere else to go."

Robert shrugs a little, pushing the covers back with still-weak fingers.

"Well I'm sorry, but I'm not sure what amusement I can provide you with, Mr. Eames. My life is precisely as boring as you'd probably expect from a career businessman. I don't think I even own any movies."

"Please, don't call me Mr. Eames, it's just Eames. And then what do you do for a hobby?"

Robert shrugs, moving around to sit on the edge of the bed.

"I read. I plot the demise of my competitors. I occasionally remember I have to order groceries. I really am a boring person… Eames, and," He looks over at the clock, pretty sure that he's been out for a while. No, it's only been three hours. Mentally smacking himself for not simply looking out the window next to him, Robert hops out of bed and immediately begins toppling over, his legs simply not ready to bear the hundred and thirty-five pounds of unhealthy ex-CEO yet.

Eames darts up and catches him again, as though he's had lots of practice in this. Robert gasps, breath knocked out of him a bit as they both land on the bed, Eames pinning him in place for far longer than seems necessary.

"… And," Robert continues weakly, looking up at Eames' very concerned-looking chin. "Well I don't really do much with myself besides sit on the couch and flip through channels. I'm sure you'd have a much better time if you left and went out somewhere, found some women or men, if that's your kind of party."

He sighs a bit in relief when Eames pulls away, apparently reassured that no, Robert is not going to keel over again.

"I used to be the kind for grand parties." Robert picks himself up, confused now. Surely the man would want to leave, now that he's confessed his incredible dullness, instead of telling stories.

"Then I had a job, and I met a few people and now…" Robert recognized that shrug. He'd thrown it often himself, usually in a response to a query his father had given him about his life and his plans.

"Well, I don't really meet new people anymore, you know? You meet someone particular and then everyone else loses their appeal." His surprise at his own frankness is written clearly across his face, and it's what prompts Robert to admit his own little secret.

"Well at least your person exists, whoever she is. Mine is from a dream I had once, a really long time ago."

If he'd pulled a snake out of his pants at that moment, Robert is sure he couldn't have conjured a more astonished expression out of Eames. After a moment the man closes his mouth, but he still looks rather astonished.

"That's funny." He mutters.

Robert's curiosity is piqued. "What's funny?" Eames just shakes his head and picks up the book he'd dropped on the floor, placing it almost reverently back on the bedside table.

"What's funny?" Robert repeats, getting up with more caution this time. Eames shakes his head, grinning again. "I'll tell you if you're good, darling."

He stumbles over to the door, snorting a little at the incessant mystery Eames seems to insist on wrapping around himself. "Well, I need to go take copious amounts of medication if I want to live a little longer. Do whatever you want."

He's promptly joined in the kitchen, in what seems like a sort of overprotective instinct on part of the other man. They stare at each other as Robert slowly goes through his new regimen of pills, and Eames continues staring at the back of his head as Robert dutifully refills the blue box with his doses from the bottles that litter his counter.

"Do you mind?" He finally asks, feeling incredibly irked by Eames' incessant staring.

Eames flinches back, apparently startled out if some unknown reverie. "Pardon." As Robert goes back to sorting out his pills, Eames begins going through his cupboards, tutting at each empty space. The loudest 'tsk' comes as Robert screws the last bottle shut and turns to discover Eames leaning on the door of the very expensive fridge, looking at the bottle of mustard and the unnamed tupperware container that were in lonely residence inside.

"What?" Robert growls, not overly affectionate towards this man who was now criticizing his kitchen.

"Do you have any food in this house, darling?" Eames doesn't have a smirk on his face, for once. His concerned face does seem to Robert to be a lot less irritating.

"No, I don't, usually."

"Then what on earth do you eat?"

Robert grabs the fridge door and closes it for him with a bit of a thump.

"I usually get take-out, alright? Stop behaving like a mother hen, it doesn't fit you."

Eames offers him a half grin that no hen could ever manage.

"But I think you like it, Robert."

"Oh piss off." He mutters, and shuffles over to his computer to look through his extensive take-out options.

Eames, rather infuriatingly, continues his newfound habit of leaning over Robert’s shoulder.

“You should get Thai, Robert. Have you ever had Thai?”

Robert turns, nearly bumping into Eames. He isn’t as bothered by his overt lack of sense of personal space so much as the feeling that Eames is out to get something. Something from him.

“Yes, I have had Thai before in my life, Mr. Eames. Tell me, do you really think that just because I’m sick, that I have to be coddled?”

“Yes,” Eames says simply, and Robert makes a positively embarrassing noise as he’s pulled into an extremely friendly bear-hug.

\-------------------------------

Eames expects Robert to struggle. He expects the man to push away, to call his security, to throw him out of his apartment and insist that they never speak again.

What he does not expect is for Robert to go limp in his arms with a small sigh and a groan, and to have the man’s wavy-haired head to rest on his shoulder in a complete absence of hostility. He retreats into snark to conceal his surprise.  
“Hey Robert, are you alright? Don’t collapse on me again darling, getting you into bed was hard enough the first time.”

“Oh shut up.” Robert mutters. Eames can feel his breath warming his shoulder. “If you’re going to coddle, coddle properly.”

Eames finds himself stumbling backwards until he lists over onto the couch, bringing Robert with him. The ex-CEO is sprawled atop him, face still hidden in the shoulder of his suit. He can feel fingers clutching at the sides of his jacket, but doesn’t say anything about it, suspecting (correctly) that the man would immediately withdraw if he did.

Instead he runs his fingers very gently through Roberts hair, and he’s rewarded by Robert going limp again, making the smallest of desperate noises as Eames cards his fingers through the man’s hair.

“Have you ever been coddled before, darling?” He asks softly, feeling that strange ache in his chest again.

“No,” Robert says, voice entirely too tight and quiet. “It didn’t help my development as a businessman, obviously.”

The ache swells up into Eames’s throat, and he tries to convey his sympathy and regret and anger through touch instead, moving his fingers from Robert’s hair to his neck, stroking like one would a cat. _I’m sorry that your father raised you as a clone of himself, he tries to say. I’m sorry that you never knew what it was like to have someone hug you. I’m sorry we went into your mind and did our utmost to twist your perception of this man you called father into a positive one. I am so, so sorry._

When he thinks Robert’s been coddled long enough he pushes false cheer into his voice, the imitation sincere enough to almost convince himself.

“Let’s order that Thai food, darling. Maybe the spice will do something for your rather dull life.”

“Why thank you for that charming pronouncement on my person,” Robert mutters, but pushes himself up and walks back over to his computer to look up the requisite phone number. If Eames closes one eye, it doesn’t look like Robert is trembling slightly.  
It doesn’t look like he’s about to fall.


End file.
